The nutloaf was nutty. The drumming was drummy. I bought a dykey leather bracelet, got my period, howled like a wolf, showered in the open air and woke up in a tent underneath several inches of water during a thunderstorm. I washed dishes in a communal trough and let a silky wolf spider shimmy up my arm. I felt Lisa Vogel’s true love for each one of us in the fireworks show on Saturday at Night Stage.

It was Fest. It was the last Fest.

Before I left, I rubbed my new bracelet in the dirt and on the bark of trees in an effort to take the Land back with me. I tore off a piece of a fern, put it in my mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

I’m in the denial stage of grief: Lisa will hear our pain; feel our need; change her mind, I keep thinking. And then, more calmly: Even if Fest doesn’t continue in the same way we’ve known for the last 40 years, it’ll revamp; renew; reformat. We may not gather in 650 acres of pristine northern Michigan woodland, but we’ll figure things out on a smaller scale. Lisa gets to retire if she wants to. No one can be the lesbian Moses, leading us out of the desert of our lives, forever. Forty years is long enough for any job. It’s as long as I’ve been alive.

“If you need it; if you want it; then create it,” we all heard from the stages – and though I appreciated the encouragement and felt a frisson of excitement at the idea of making something blossom out of the Fest seeds, I don’t think I’m alone in doubting that I can create exactly what I’ve needed, and got, in my years on the Land. The most creative idea I’ve got at this point has to do with an all-women’s potluck. And I don’t know any sisters in this town. So I feel sad and afraid.

The loss of Fest is serious and worthy of our grief. Many women depended on Fest to be:

The only place they ever got to fully inhabit themselves without the male gaze; without judgment; without fear; seeing themselves only through loving eyes and finding themselves enough.

The only place they could set a bag down and walk away; knowing it’d be there when they got back.

The only place they could travel from a great distance with only a backpack; knowing their needs would be met by the Land and the women on it.

The only place they ever experienced a week without men – and, more importantly, with only women – and if you haven’t experienced this, I can’t explain its transformative power.

The only place they ever spoke – or listened – to a much older woman or a very little girl.

The only place no one treated them as inferior because they were deaf, or disabled, or a single mother, or had a full beard, or worked a blue- or pink-collar job.

The only place they really mattered to other people.

The only thing they were ever really a part of.

The “only place” part is, I think, a real indictment of the world we live in; of “Area 51.”

I know that women always have, and always will, find ways to connect and get our needs met – even in, or especially in, times and places deeply hostile to us. We are water that flows downward and rust that never sleeps, and this goes double for lesbians: What have we not done? Where have we not gone? When have we not carved out spaces for ourselves – and long, long before the Internet, when we were still criminals just by being who we were?

Because I lived in South Carolina for years, right-wing arguments for flying the Confederate flag are as familiar to me as right-wing arguments against marriage equality. They’re similarly disingenuous:

“Heritage, not hate!”/”I love homosexuals; I just don’t agree with their lifestyle.”

“The flag has always flown in front of the State House!”/”It’s not for us to change God’s definition of marriage!”

“The Civil War was about states’ rights; not slavery.”/”This is about religious freedom, not bigotry.”

“This is a matter best left to individual states.”/”This is a matter best left to individual states.”

Simple, thinly-veiled hostility, mixed with appeals to tradition, individual rights, capitalistic terror, a persecution complex, and the Lord God Almighty Himself. These arguments dry up and blow away if you have a basic understanding of our secular legal system and/or the Old Testament, which defines marriage in a drastically different way than anything now sanctioned by the strictest Southern Baptist, including polygamy and marrying your rapist. (Google that stuff. Also, remember never to wear a cotton-polyester blend or cook a young goat in its mother’s milk, OK? I went to Bible school, so don’t mess with me. We can quote Scripture back and forth until Gabriel’s trump).

The above arguments are a cover for the real arguments, which are:

“I despise African-Americans.”/”I’m freaked out by the thought of a penis going into an anus, as well as the idea of two women tasting other’s vaginas without a man in the room.”

We can move on now! Right-wingers are what they’ve always been. What I’m fascinated with are the progressive arguments against same-sex marriage; from people with whom I agree on most other things and who ought to be celebrating Friday’s Supreme Court decision. This set of arguments goes like:

1. All systems and modes of oppression have not yet been eradicated, therefore we shouldn’t care about marriage.

2. Marriage is a heterosexual institution and therefore unimportant for gays.

3. Marriage is a patriarchal institution about “ownership” and therefore bad for women.

4. You don’t need a piece of paper to prove the stability and truth of your love.

This set of arguments is egregiously balls, because:

1. I can care about, and work on, lots of things at the same time! Like, the other day, I did a Jillian Michaels workout involving a squat with a shoulder press! Also, why do gays and lesbians need to put on everyone else’s oxygen mask first? Why do we always have to eat the burned one? What’s up with the guilt trip? Are we everyone’s mommy? Finally, where (besides during the second wave) was all the weighting and measuring of marriage when it was only for heterosexuals? Why all of a sudden are we line-editing it as an institution?

2. Heterosexuals don’t own marriage, just like they don’t own any other integral social institution or benefit. As long as human beings feel a deep, primal need to couple up and build lives together; we all have a vested interest in the legal equality of those relationships. You’re a same-sex couple who doesn’t want your relationship sanctioned by law? Fine! My wife and I won’t choose for you; you don’t get to choose for us. It’s a lot like how I find abortion morally reprehensible in most cases, but still support its legality, because I don’t get to decide for other people. I don’t have to live with the consequences of their decisions, so I don’t get in the way.

3. Marriage is only patriarchal if there’s a man in the marriage. Let’s go ahead and name the agent: Men, historically, have oppressed women in marriage (as well as outside it). Women don’t oppress one another in this way, nor can they (if you have any class analysis at all). I’m sorry if this hurts your feelings. If you’re using this argument, you’re likely a young person who wants to subvert and resist and who has never filed a federal tax return; or someone who is deeply bitter for personal reasons. It’s your own Very Special Journey. But you don’t get to dictate to me.

4. Of course you don’t need a piece of paper to prove the stability and truth of your love – but you do need it to prove you’ve made one specific, legal, and protected commitment – a commitment in which you sign on for over a thousand rights, privileges and obligations that can’t be taken away. Once you make that commitment – namely, federally-recognized marriage; not a civil union or domestic partnership – your situation doesn’t change whenever the political winds blow. You are not at the mercy of people who do not wish you well. The thought of what you do in bed squicks them out six ways to Sunday? Tough. They don’t have to host your reception at their particular church; they don’t have to send you a gravy boat off your registry, but – and this is all that matters – they can’t make you less-than.

And, a special message to the heterosexual “progressive” women who’ve always been able to marry and who dismiss marriage equality as unimportant? Fuck right off out of here. I’ve spent years caring about things like male domestic violence and your right to contraception, and you presume to tell me what is and isn’t important in my life, or what ought to be done first or beforehand?

How’d you like it if my wife and I took an Andrea Dworkin line on your relationship? Your sex life and relationship is oppressive and coercive by its very nature, ladies. How’d that feel?

You, and everyone else who purports to know what’s best for us, can throw all the shade you want. Because this one’s done. This one, as Justice Kennedy wrote from the highest court in the land, is immutable.

If you were immersed in Evangelical culture during the 90s, like I was, you’ll recognize that as the text of a popular T-shirt. Even back then, I resented the sentiment, which gave me a mental image of a Bible Heisman – someone gripping a King James translation in one hand whilst stiffly holding up the other and leaning away.

Don’t confuse me with subtleties, that shirt meant. Don’t bring gradient shading or a different interpretation or, most importantly, any of your annoying questions. I have all the answers.

One guy who owned that shirt once wrote an impassioned editorial in the campus newspaper, imploring his “little sisters in faith” not to worry about equal pay, because “equal pay does not advance the cause of Christ.”

It sure helps us buy our groceries, though, I thought but didn’t say.

That was the year we had a pro-life group speak in Chapel. They assured us that it was exceedingly rare for a woman to become pregnant from rape. It was the year one of the guys from our brother dorm told me that the way he planned to find a wife was, he was going to choose a girl who turned him down at least three times for a one-on-one date because that’s how he’d know she was “pure.” It was the year the music professor had to resign because people found out she was gay.

Anyway. I haven’t run in Evangelical circles (double meaning intended) in years, yet I’m often forcibly reminded of that T-shirt as I keep up with the news; read certain blogs; and talk to people who have no experience with the particular black-and-white mindset I’ve described here. But, instead of “God said it. I believe it. That settles it,” the messages – all of which could fit on a T-shirt – are:

Transwomen are women. Transwomen are women. Transwomen are women.

Sex work is work.

Porn is empowering.

Some men have vaginas.

Check your privilege!

Having marinated, as I did, in smug zealotry for many years, I recognize it when I see it. The currency of each of these pomo statements – and plenty more you’ll find repeated in liberal feminist circles – has more in common with fundamentalist, totalitarian religion than with rational, secular discourse. Every time I hear this kind of thing, I remember a guy in my Old Testament History class nodding his head sagely the day Kurt Cobain died, saying, “Well, he’s not in Nirvana now.”

I have all the answers.

I, and others who agree with me, are the only people who really see the truth.

Everyone else is blind, mistaken, an apostate, and going straight to Hell.

It’s up to us to correct them. Let’s keep the message simple.

Twenty-three years later, I’ve kept the good stuff; the real stuff. I’m no atheist. And, as a return on all those years, I got three bonus gifts, like those awesome sunscreen moisturizers Sephora stuffed into my bag after I spent too much in the store:

(1) I can think for myself.

(2) I can tell immediately when someone else wants to think for me.

(3) I can wager a pretty good guess as to why.A hint? Power. See also: Control.

Fundamentalism does two things at the same time: It makes you doubt your own perceptions and therefore yourself; and it assures you that the belief you’re repping makes you unassailably right.

A belief – especially the unwavering kind unleavened by facts or examination – can be far more dangerous than any idea. A belief can be a fetter; a blindfold; a too-tight, lettered T-shirt you put on willingly and then have trouble taking off.

Everydaymisogyny.com is a site I try to avoid/ignore/forget about because its very existence serves to remind me what a pathetic, embarrassing, whiny, narcissistic, useless cock-centric waste of time and thought liberal “feminism” is. In fact, the very bowels of liberal feminism are represented by Everydaymisogyny.com and, frankly, it’s fucking depressing – not just because it’s stupid and worthless, but because it demonstrates how completely lost young women are, how completely void of a political analysis they are, how deeply brainwashed they are by the men at the helm of the gender cult.

Let’s just be honest: feminism is dead. What the dominant culture calls feminism is a zombified version of the actual thing – a word that’s been made palatable for men, that’s been glittered over, the brains sucked out, and sold back to young women in the form of empowerment through fucking for…

The most delusional snippet of Bruce Jenner’s two hour – TWO HOUR! not even Richard Nixon got that much air time! – “interview” with the extremely accommodating, softballing Diane Sawyer who is now dead to me, was none of the following:

When Jenner fixed Sawyer with batshit-crazy pinwheel eyes and said “UNDERSTAND?” in a tone that every woman knows means, “Shut your mouth, bitch.”

When Jenner – who has no ovaries or uterus or breasts and has never had a period or a yeast infection or a pregnancy scare; who has never checked the backseat of his car for rapists and who never had to wait for his male classmates to finish using his high school or college gym so he could get in to train) said, “For all intents and purposes, I am a woman.”

When Jenner explained how Seriously Important his new reality show would be: “What I’m doing is going to do some good. We are going to change the world. We are going to make a difference in the world.”

When Jenner referred, mysteriously (in a way that forcibly reminded me of Lars von Trier) to his female self as “Her.”

When we found out Jenner is Republican and religious.

When Jenner shifted back and forth from stereotypical teen-girl body language (tipping his chin; dabbing daintily at his eyes) to full-on grown man body language (leaning forward; acting like he was about to stand up, RAWWRRRRR) when Sawyer gently suggested that some people might think he was doing this for the show.

The dramatic Ponytail Release!

Crazypants, but none of it surprised me: Jenner is a wealthy, famous, 65-year-old white male ex-star athlete who has always been allowed – encouraged! – to do whatever it takes to get whatever he wants, because what he wants is the most important thing in the world. The guy’s life is not, never was and never will be normal. He may not even be getting enough oxygen to his brain, considering what he’s done to his nose.

Bottom line: Jenner believes that female is a feeling in a man’s head, and that “woman” means “a specific set of gendered behaviors and preferences.” Because he believes this, every bullet point above makes total sense to him as dream logic makes sense to the dreamer.

The coup de grace for me, the part that made me sit up straight as my pelvic floor snapped involuntarily to attention, was this quote: “I look at women all the time and think how lucky are they that they can wake in the morning and be themselves.”

WHAT WHAT WHAT

HA HA

NO SERIOUSLY FUCK BRUCE JENNER A LITTLE BIT

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or assume the duck-and-cover nuclear drill posture underneath my couch. Women can wake in the morning and be themselves! What a pleasant fiction!

Only a man thinks this; only a man believes it.

Half the Internet (the other half is porn) is comprised of articles about what women should and should not do; what we should and should not eat and wear and do with our bodies at the gym; where is safe and unsafe for us to go; how many children we should have and whether we should work after we have them; how we should and should not age and who cares about us anyway when we’re old and therefore valueless.

If women could “wake in the morning and be themselves” without suffering professional and romantic consequences, you’d be shocked by how much body hair we can grow, Bruce, and how much of our “glow” is artfully-applied makeup. I’m fairly andro in terms of presentation – barely femme-adjacent on my femmiest day – and you should see my Sephora bill, Bruce; it reads like the federal defense budget. That’s because I’m 40 now, and letting myself age naturally without expensive intervention isn’t good for my career. If I dated men, I’d need to buy makeup too, because one thing you gots to do when you’re a woman who dates men, Bruce? You gots to carefully curate an image of artless, effortless beauty.

Jenner is confused, like a lot of people are confused, about (a) what makes a woman; and (b) what it really means to be one, from they day you’re born until the day you die. I wonder if this confusion (and pain) could have been avoided if he’d been allowed to be a man who won gold medals, loved women, and wore dresses and nail polish outside without losing everything.

I wonder, too, what it means to have a “female soul” or a “female brain.” What does it mean to “feel like a woman inside”? Jenner didn’t explain that. He didn’t have to, because Sawyer never asked. These substantive questions – the ones that didn’t address ponytails, dresses, or plastic surgery – were left conspiciously out of the “interview,” just as they are omitted from the greater conversation in this country, at this time.

Owing to the extreme generosity of a dear friend, my wife and I will be able to attend MichFest this year. My wife has attended before, but for me, it will be the first, and – as it turns out – last time to visit the land.

All I know about MichFest is what I’ve heard from others who’ve attended before. Most are rendered unable to articulate the experience adequately. “It’s just . . .” women often say. “It’s hard to describe . . . you have to be there.”

Because there are no words, there is no language, I suppose, for what it feels like as a female human being to exist for six days among other female human beings, to celebrate our existence, to talk to one another without protecting the delicate male ego, to exist outside of the male gaze, to walk in the dark without fear…

This weekend, we sat a spell to watch an OWN documentary all about our role model. We wanted to know more about this person that we (dykes aged thirty-eight and forty) should look to and strive to emulate.

What we learned is that Jazz Jennings is a kid who likes pink, dresses, makeup and flipping his shiny hair. Jazz is also a kid who refers to himself in third person. “I like being Jazz,” he says, as he reclines in a pink bed awash with plush animals.

Most of what Jazz says sounds forced, coached, even as he spouts off the ubiquitous tropes surrounding transgenderism: “I’m a girl trapped in a boy’s body” and “I have a girl brain.”

Jazz, again, is fourteen. His parents began transing him when he was in preschool, after discovering that he preferred the company of girls and enjoyed wearing his sister’s swimsuit. Jazz himself never speaks of an inner torment, a period of struggle – his transition has been relatively easy, thanks to parents who immediately recognized his effervescence, his fondness for crimson hues as evidence of ladybrain.

What we swiftly deduced: Jazz’s parents, a relatively conservative duo, could not bear the thought of a homosexual son (much less the screamingly flamboyant, Fire-Island-style homosexual Jazz was on the road to becoming), and preferred instead a more “normal” straight daughter.

“Jazz has a girl brain,” the child’s father insists (he also frequently kisses his girlbrained child on the lips – make of that what you will).

“Jazz plays like a girl,” the child’s soccer coach affirms. “She runs daintily.” (No, really. One of the interviewed subjects in the film actually fucking said this.)

And then there’s the nauseatingly emphatic refrain that the kid is a “perfectly normal girl – no different than any other girl.” EXCEPT, of course, for small differences like how Jazz has to go to an endocrinologist to have his measured to determine if he’s yet reached puberty. (We mean, that’s a rite of passage for all girls. We’ll never forget the day out parents took us to the doctor to have our testicles measured.)

At the above doctor’s appointment, it is determined that Jazz has begun puberty. The child is then asked if he would like to start taking puberty blockers. “You don’t want to grow facial hair, do you?” His mother (who also refers to herself as a “transgender mom”) coyly queries her son.

Despite the incessant claims that Jazz is “no different from any other girl,” Jazz is acutely aware of his specialness. In fact, his specialness seems to dominate life in this family, practically eclipsing the existence of his three other siblings. Jazz is constantly consulted regarding what he thinks; what he wants – because Jazz’ every word comes from the Burning Gender Bush.

But, the thing is, Jazz isn’t special. Jazz is a kid whose parents, like so many others, believe the lie that conflates biological reality with outward presentation; the lie that posits an individual’s preferences and tastes are intrinsically representative of the preferences and tastes of an entire category of people: female. They also believe the lie that females’ brains are structurally different from male brains – the lie from whence legally-codified misogyny has sprung since the beginning of time.

And this is where we get down to brass tacks. Jazz Jennings, himself, doesn’t really matter. Jazz is just another kid whose parents hock his “specialness” for reality-TV money and some skin care product commercials (he does have great skin, probably from the hormone blockers). What matters is what we can learn from this kid who’s been shoved into public view – and it’s not a lesson about bravery, or being “the real me” – rather, it’s a lesson in how hopelessly steeped in misogyny our culture still is.

As we watched the trainwreck of Jazz, we speculated about what might be a truly progressive way to work with and nurture a kid like him. Let him wear dresses and makeup, we decided. Let him grow his hair long, and hang out with girls and have crushes on boys. Be a good, vigilant parent and make sure no one is bullying your son for wearing his dresses and makeup and long hair to school.

And while you’re doing that, afford that kid a modicum of reality – let him be okay as a male, let him be okay with his body and his biology. Help him be part of a world where a boy can wear dresses if he wants, where a boy can drench his bedroom in pink if he likes, and still be what he is – a boy. A perfectly healthy, loveable little boy who likes things that our fucked up, narrow-minded, patriarchal society has deemed “abnormal” for him to like. And, when he grows from a boy into a man, let him fall in love with normal gay men who might love him back – not people who will simply fetishize him.

The progressive response to a kid like Jazz is NOT to conclude he has a “girl brain” but to accept that as individual human beings our inclinations do in fact vary, and that those variances have precious little to do with our biology. That approach might create a real cultural shift. That approach might take a sledgehammer to regressive notions of gender. Because if a male – a perfectly normal male – can pursue interests that have previously been deemed exclusively “female,” then we really have scrambled gender, really turned it on its head.

People like Jazz’s parents, people who believe in and perpetuate the tenets of transgenderism are the same people who – albeit inadvertently – cause problems for women like us. In a gendered sense, we don’t “do woman” very well. When we’re in rural areas, buying gas, we get stares because we’re not women “doing woman” the way we ought to. The butch-er one of us would probably make folks in some areas more comfortable if she’d just transition. A little facial hair might ward off some looks.

Because that’s gender – it’s not a spectrum, it’s a dichotomy.

Gender isn’t designed to be a playground of special identities – it’s a system that categorizes males and a female based on social/cultural conventions; then subjugates women while exalting men. The system that facilitates rape and honor killings is the same system that says a little boy can’t enjoy wearing a colorful swimsuit without requiring extreme medical intervention. This system says it’s better to medicate and mutilate your male child than have him be a homosexual boy who likes stereotypically “feminine” behaviors and interests. That’s how Iran does it, right? Better he be a girl than challenge repressive gender norms in a way that could, potentially, upend patriarchy. Better he appear on TV and condescend to girls (and full-grown-ass women) how to “be themselves.”

Masculinity and femininity are both bullshit notions. What is deemed masculine, what is deemed feminine – these are nothing but human behaviors. Males can be highly emotional but we’ve filed “emotional” underneath “feminine” so as to trivialize it. Males can like sparkly pink skirts and lipstick, but because we’ve relegated this aesthetic to the realm of the feminine, it is deemed “silly” and “prissy.” We equate femininity, and its coded behaviors and preferences, with weakness and frivolity – and yet, women (and only women) are supposed to be subsumed by these matters. When they show themselves subsumed (because how else to garner male approval in the hierarchical structure of gender?) we delude ourselves into believing that this is a natural state: Women are silly, trivial, frivolous, petty.

Conversely, females can be physically strong (watch any female Olympic lifter, martial artist, or gymnast) but we’ve relegated physical prowess and powerful musculature to the realm of the masculine. Females can be interested in auto mechanics. Females can be highly logical, a quality gender ascribes to the realm of the masculine. Females can also be serious and stoic. And none of these characteristics have jack shit to do with our DNA; our physical, biological reality.

What we do, as a society, when females and males blur these lines, employ behaviors, or follow interests that do not “fit” with the category their biological sex has socially placed them in, is we label them “anomalies” or “transgender.” We claim we can “fix” the male child who wants to grow out his hair and wear his sister’s sundress. We claim the butch dyke who likes tinkering with cars probably has a male brain. We work really hard, and the medical community is fully on board, to preserve gender norms. And transgenderism is a way of preserving gender norms and calling the oppressive mandate “subversive.”

Do we believe that some folks feel better, more comfortable, more “at home” in their bodies by presenting as women when they were born male? Yes, of course. And we support individuals’ decisions to present in a way that feels most “right” to them – but we do not, and will not, buy into a belief in “girl brains.” The very idea of “girl brains” is nothing more than a form of eugenics that’s been used against women (and racial/ethnic minorities) for many centuries in order to deprive us of bodily autonomy, education, votes, and anything else a human needs and wants to enjoy full humanity.

Nor do we believe that it is moral, ethical, or in the best interests of a child to medically alter his or her perfectly healthy body in order to make our sexist, misogynist society feel more comfortable with who that child is. Nor do we believe that swallowing large amounts of synthetic hormones MAKES one female or male, and we think selling that lie to a child is most pernicious because it denies a developing human being the opportunity to weigh her/his options as an adult with adult reasoning/critical thinking skills. It denies a developing human being the opportunity to know reality – i.e. biology.

And, at the end of the day, it hurts girls – you know, actual female children. In the documentary about Jazz, the child’s father laments that his daughter (son) cannot play on the girls’ soccer team at school. The child’s father CRIES (seriously) when discussing the grave injustice of a male-bodied person not being able to play on a girls’ sports team. (Especially when he runs so daintily!)

We encounter real problems when we sacrifice basic biological knowledge at the altar of special identities/feelings/and gender – e.g., biologically, boys and girls develop differently. Like, our bodies are actually different. And, particularly in adolescence, boys have a distinct physical advantage over girls. And athletics have, historically, been a great way for girls to gain access to college scholarships, as well as to develop healthy relationships with their bodies. Now, of course, in order to placate the feelings (delusions) of boy children, girls will be made to compete with male-bodied persons in the field of athletics, placing them at a disadvantage.

But this is what gender always does; this is what gender is meant to do – put females at a disadvantage in all things. Our needs, our feelings as females do not really matter. What matters is that we do what girl-brained people are supposed to do, shut up and suck it up, and accept the version of reality that’s being sold to us – even when it doesn’t make any fucking sense.

In the documentary about Jazz, no hard questions were asked of the child’s parents. Like, “what does it mean to have a girl brain?” Or, “Do you have any qualms about delaying your child’s normal growth when we don’t understand what the long-term ramifications of that decision might be?” Instead, the entire scenario was presented as “adorable” and “inspiring.” It’s adorable to delude your male child into believing he’s female. It’s adorable to pump a healthy, pre-pubescent body full of chemicals. It’s adorable to interpret meaningless penchants as biological imperatives. It’s inspiring when a child’s every whim is indulged. It’s inspiring when children emulate the repressive gender stereotypes laid out for them by the society in which they live.

But no one challenges the transgender line of thinking, because transgenderism is comfortable; transgenderism challenges nothing about the dominant gender paradigm, or the hierarchical structure that positions women on the bottom of everything. And those of us who dare ask meaningful questions about where all of this leads are slurred, villified, de-platformed.

The adults encouraging Jazz’ transition, though, are all presented as white gender knights. In one scene toward the end of the documentary, Jazz’ mother brings him to speak on a university panel. The only minor in attendance, Jazz is surrounded by grown-ass trans people who, frankly, look and sound pretty miserable. They all tell Jazz how lucky he is, and how happy he’ll be that he began transitioning early. This is the only time Jazz drops his confident, shiny-haired posing and looks like what he actually is – a scared little boy. He cowers toward his mother, and doesn’t have much to say except, “I want boobs.”

At the end of the panel, one of the transwomen wraps Jazz in a long hug and says, “I’ll trade you my boobs for your hair.”

How is this anything but skin-crawlingly weird?

So we hope, for Jazz’s sake, that the kid turns out all right, that the world is kind to him, and that he doesn’t grow to resent the bullshit line he’s been sold about “girl brains” and “boy brains,” that he doesn’t have to shoulder the profound burden of regret created by what his parents, the medical community, and the adults around him did to his perfectly normal body when he was still a child.

Sadly, however, we’re positioned as a society to only see more stories like Jazz’s – where parents apply gender dogma to their children’s behavior, and allow their firm (albeit erroneous) convictions about what “girls do” and what “boys do” to justify wreaking havoc on their children’s minds and bodies.

As for females, the consequences of continuing to perpetuate the lie of ladybrain will be increasingly devastating – as we make room for males who believe our lives are nothing more than a hunch; a feeling in a man’s head; we can say goodbye to women’s colleges, women’s sports, women’s clinics. As an understanding of reality becomes synonymous with bigotry, we will part with all language and art that allowed us to address, deconstruct, express and celebrate our lived female experience. Our feminist folk heroes will be grown men, our role models adolescent boys.

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"It is true, and very much to the point, that women are objects, commodities, some deemed more expensive than others - but it is only by asserting one’s humanness every time, in all situations, that one becomes someone as opposed to something. That, after all, is the core of our struggle."
--Andrea Dworkin